I came across a headline in Miami Herald about an acquaintance I have met many years ago in Cuba: Pedro Alvarez Borrego now a house-flipping capitalist. I think Mr. Alvarez Borrego has always been a capitalist at heart. You’ve got to be one if you are working for the Trade Department regardless of your country’s political persuasion. Pedro’s leaving Cuba is a case of Pedro Pan 2.0 with a capitalist twist. This has reference to Operacion Pedro Pan, which ferried Cuban kids out of Castro’s Cuba during the Cold War. 

He was not an ordinary man, this Alvarez Borrego. He was the head of Alimport, the Cuban agency responsible for importing food stuff from the United States, the annual average of which was more than a billion US dollars. Now, ignoramuses may wonder why Americans sell commodities to a country that they are supposed to be strangling to extinction. Food stuff and medicines were exempted from the sanctions. 

Believe it or not! American hamburger patties, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets  proliferate in Cuban stores. Come to think of it, the American sanctions on Cuba should have been eliminated a long time ago when they agreed to this arrangement. One can’t pretend to continue hemming in someone inside an enclosure while allowing loads of supplies right through the front door. It goes against all rules of conflict. You can either exercise a full embargo against your enemy or cease doing it. There’s no middle ground in siege warfare. 

Mr. Alvarez Borrego was the person responsible for opening that door to enterprising Americans who have no use for those sanctions. He talked directly with them and had the power to decide which items are to be brought in. He seemed like a nice man when I first met him. Later, I found out from the news that he was abruptly transferred to the Camara de Comercio, still a plum posting but not as “viable” as the one he had at Alimport. No reason was given for his relief, but there were already stories coming from the grapevine about alleged corruption. 

It is not unthinkable that something like this could happen in Cuba. Imagine living on a monthly of wage of about US$20. In Mr. Alvarez Borrego’s case, he had the power to decide which exporters to accommodate. All of these people tried to wine and dine him for that coveted approval. You can be sure that a number of these businessmen tried to bribe their way to get contracts. Perhaps, Mr. Alvarez Borrego may have indeed helped himself to some. 

What happened to Alvarez Borrego is nothing less than stuff of legends. After he was summarily removed from office, a few of his aides were jailed. Then, he disappeared. A number of reports started popping up in Florida about his supposed asylum. Some say, he escaped right through the teeth of Cuban immigration dressed as a woman bearing a Spanish passport. This is quite odd because immigration people check the fingerprints at the point of exits. This story is just too fishy to be real.

Fast forward two years later, Mr. Alvarez Borrego has managed to reinvent himself as a real estate savant and a business consultant in Tampa, where his daughter and sister lives. Many people in Florida are up in arms about his business dealings. How dare he try to make something out of himself in America, people say? What is a man like Alvarez Borrego supposed to do anyway? He is very valuable for his intimate knowledge of doing business in Cuba. Why begrudge him for living his American dream? 

I’d say leave him alone. He is just trying to achieve his American dream like everybody else. Does it matter that he came not via a sun-bleached craft across shark-infested waters, but aboard a chartered plane while dressed as a woman? Those right-wing yumas in Miami should be the last one to judge him. How many of them where in cahoots with the corrupt Batista regime when they left Cuba anyway? I’d say, good for you, Don Pedro! You did what you had to do. 

Now, stealing is deplorable anywhere in the world. I guess the onus should be put on the ageing leaders of the Cuban regime. It is due to their failed policies that people like Mr. Alvarez Borrego had to resort to pilfering from the government. These leaders admit that they’ve made “mistakes” in trying to achieve a Socialist utopia, but they hardheadedly continue the current path anyway. 

Cuba’s leaders continue to parrot the slogan: Socialismo o Muerte! Now that Socialismo appears to be failing, do they embrace Muerte? It’s a good thing that they had the clueless Hugo Chavez giving them a free pass. What are they going to do when Venezuela’s US$ 5 billion annual dole-outs disappear? Oh well, There’s always emigration a la Pedro Pan 2.0. Like what Alvarez Borrego did and achieved for himself.